Author: Eric Drown

Eric’s Working Plan for SSII

Some people have asked me to clarify my availability to communicate with students in this class.

Because this is an asynchronous online class, the primary way you’ll interact with me in an instructional manner is in writing, by way of my comments on your posts on the course website and my comments on your draft, papers, and assignments. All discussion of readings will happen in writing on the course website.

I answer email Mondays through Thursdays first thing in the morning and then once again in the evening. I’ll follow the same pattern on Sundays.

I’m available Mondays through Thursdays by prior appointment for a Zoom call or chat. I’ll need 24 hours advanced notice for a Zoom appointment. These appointments should be booked primarily for supplementary consultations on paper drafts or to discuss how to use feedback received on finished papers. Ordinarily, they’ll last between 10 and 30 minutes.

Paper 3 – Social Technologies, Conversation & Adulthood

Essential Question: What should we think about Turkle’s claim that social technologies are changing the conversations we have and thereby changing how we relate to one another as adults in ways that reduce empathy for one another and foster depression and social anxiety?

Write a paper about how social technologies like social media and internet-connected mobile phones both connect and disconnect us with consequences for the conversations we have in social, work, and educational settings. You’ll synthesize the work of Turkle, Konnikova, Henig, and your classmates, as well as your own ideas and experiences, to respond to Turkle’s argument that social technologies are changing the conversations we have and thereby changing how we relate to one another as adults in ways that reduce empathy for one another and foster depression and social anxiety.

In making your argument, draw on and develop your pre-writing and entering-the-conversation work done over the last several classes.

Your audience is a general reader who has NOT read Turkle, Henig, Konnikova or your classmate’s work.

Your purpose is to advance your own perspective (view or argument) in response to Turkle’s claim that social technologies are changing how we relate to one another as adults in ways that reduce empathy and foster depression and social anxiety. Synthesizing and responding to the ideas presented by Turkle, Henig, Konnikova and at least one classmate. Be sure to analyze relevant examples from their texts and your own experiences.

Expectations:

  • Use this Google Docs template to set up your manuscript in MLA style.
  • Write a paper of 1,000 words or more in which you develop your perspective on how social technologies, conversation, and adulthood.
  • Briefly introduce Turkle’s diagnosis of the impact of social technologies on human relationships and the questions and issues she raises that you want to address in your essay.
  • Introduce Henig and Konnikova when you first put their ideas in conversation with Turkle’s.
  • Incorporate quotes from Turkle, Henig and Konnikova and at least 1 from one of your classmate’s pre-writing.
  • Engage Turkle’s idea that embracing authentic face-to-face conversations is a cure for depression and social anxiety.
  • Incorporate a least one moment in your essay in which you “play the believing game,” write about the merits of someone’s idea you find difficult to accept, and respond to those merits with complicating points of your own (or from one of your classmates). PRO TIP: Use Barclay’s Formula and Okay, But templates to help structure this.
  • Plant a naysayer in your essay.
  • Use voice markers and signal verbs to mark shifts from one voice to another.
  • Use pivot words (transitions), pointing words, and repeated key words and phrases to connect the parts of your paragraphs and paper together.
  • Make the Who Cares? and So What? moves.
  • Document your sources using MLA style, with signal phrases, in-text parenthetical references, and a Works Cited page to signal your use of other writers’ words.

Information needed to write a MLA-style citation for “The Flight From Conversation”

Author: Sherry Turkle Chapter title: “The Flight from Conversation” Book title: Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in the Digital Age Publisher: Penguin Press Date Published: 2015

Introductions & Conclusions

While different fields and disciplines tend to do things a bit differently, in academic writing like the kind we’re practicing in this class there are certain introductory and concluding tasks that readers expect writers to complete.

Introductions tend to:

  • Establish a topic or area of inquiry and a reason for writing about the topic
  • Establish the existing lines of thought (what other writers have to say) about the topic
  • Establish the central concerns or questions you intend to focus on in  the essay
  • Establish your own initial claims about the central concerns or questions of the essay (in somewhat simpler form than the ones you’ll arrive at in the conclusion)

Conclusions tend to:

  • Pull together and connect the threads of your (now more complex) argument as developed in the body section through engagement with the ideas, claims, evidence, examples, and perspectives of other writers to address the central concerns and answer the driving questions of the essay
  • Address evidence or perspectives (naysayers) for which your argument is unable to account, or which requiring hedging
  • Discuss implications of your argument, explaining what else must or might be true if the reader accepts the writer’s argument
  • Discuss the significance of the conclusions you have drawn for the specific audience of readers targeted by the essay – how can they use the conclusions in their work or life

Entering the Conversation – 6

Deepen our collective understanding by responding to your classmates’ second posts on “The Flight from Conversation.”

Expectations:

  • Respond to at least two different classmates’ posts.
  • Use the fundamental They Say/I Say structures in your paragraphs.
  • Quote one other classmate in at least one of your replies.
  • Use voice markers to mark the shift from one voice to another in at least one of your replies.
  • Use pivotal words to connect sentences.
  • Use signal verbs.
  • Use the So What? Who Cares? moves in at least one of your replies.

On “The Flight from Conversation” – Pre-writing 2

Use Barclay’s Formula to compose lengthy paragraphs in response to the following prompts. Minimum word count per response: 250 words.

  1. Sherry Turkle examines the impact of phones on our relationships with one another. Revisit “The Limits of Friendship.” How does Konnikova both confirm and complicate Turkle’s views on relationships in the digital age?
  2. Explain what Turkle fears about the flight from conversation in terms of the human development of emerging adults. What role does “conversation” play in our ability to act as adults in social, work or classroom settings? Include ideas from Henig’s work on adulthood and emerging adulthood in your response.

Expectations:

  • Use Barclay’s Formula to structure your paragraphs.
  • Include the So What? and Who Cares? moves in both responses.
  • Use voice markers, pivot words, and signal verbs.

Entering the Conversation – 5

Deepen our collective understanding by responding to your classmates’ first posts on “The Flight from Conversation.”

Expectations:

  • Respond to at least two different classmates’ posts.
  • Use the fundamental They Say/I Say structures in your paragraphs.
  • Quote one other classmate in at least one of your replies.
  • Use voice markers to mark the shift from one voice to another in at least one of your replies.
  • Use pivotal words to connect sentences.
  • Use signal verbs.
  • Use the So What? Who Cares? moves in at least one of your replies.

On “The Flight from Conversation” – Pre-writing 1

Respond in lengthy paragraphs to the prompts below. Be sure to use what you’ve learned about integrating your ideas with those of others in your responses.

Remember, pre-writing not only deepens your understanding of the reading, it generates ideas, words, and connections that contribute to your formal paper.

  1. Turkle insists that she’s “not anti-technology;” she’s “pro-conversation” (25). Summarize Turkle’s argument about how the presence of phones in social, work, or classroom setting impacts the kinds of conversations people have in those settings. Then, explain what she thinks people lose when they don’t have the kinds of conversations she values.
  2. Describe your own use of phones in social, work, and/or classroom settings. Explain how your experiences and the experiences of people you know confirm or complicate Turkle’s claims.
  3. How do the college students Turkle interviews feel about the “weird little pressure” they experience to check their phones frequently (31)? In what ways does you own experience confirm or complicate Turkle’s view?

Expectations:

  • Use the fundamental They Say/I Say structure in your paragraphs
  • Insert a naysayer into at least one response.
  • Incorporate voice markers in your paragraphs.
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